ShakespeareZombie

ShakespeareZombie

Tuesday, August 15, 2017

Scooby Apocalypse, Volume 1 by Keith Giffen and J.M. DeMatteis, Illustrated by Jim Lee and Howard Porter


I loved Scooby-Doo when I was younger, absolutely loved. Come on, there was a talking dog, and a bunch of teens who chased after monsters and ghosts in their multi-colored van. I always loved guessing who the "monster" was at the end of the episode. There were many versions of Scooby-Doo, and I think I watched all of them. Scooby-Doo, Where Are You?, The 13 Ghosts of Scooby-Doo, that weirdly 1980s A Pup Named Scooby-Doo, Scooby-Doo movies where they met the Harlem Globetrotters and other guests, even the Laff-A-Lympics. I was fairly obsessed with the character*, and I never even smoked any drugs whatsoever.

 The Scooby Apocalypse series seemed pretty intriguing, and my library's website had the first volume. It's sort of a grittier story. Velma works at a secret underground facility, the Complex. She and the other scientists have developed nanites and secretly slipped them into all of the people everywhere. It was supposed to make the population more peaceful, but she found out that they really are meant to control their minds.

Velma decides to inform the general public. She contacts a journalist to get the new out, one Daphne Blake of Daphne Blake's Mysterious Mysteries, a show that airs late at night on the Knitting Channel. Daphne and her cameraman Fred meet with Velma, who takes them back to the Complex to show them her evidence. On the way, they run into her fellow employee, Norville "Shaggy" Rogers. He's a dog trainer who is very close to Scooby, one of the dogs whose brain was enhanced for the smart dog program. All four of them, plus the dog, are in the facility's Safe Zone when the alarm goes off. The nanites have somehow been activated.

 What greets them outside the Safe Zone is terrifying. People have been transformed into monsters. The monsters have been killing and eating those who haven't transformed, and killing and eating other monsters. The gang ends up escaping the Complex in an experimental vehicle known as the Mystery Machine. They travel around, encountering more monsters, gathering supplies, and trying to contact other Complex locations to figure out a plan of action. In the meantime, they are being hunted by the monsters and a group of smart dogs looking for Velma to fix their implants and for revenge against Scooby, led by a dog named...Scrappy-Doo. That made me laugh. 

Scooby Apocalypse was definitely a unique take on the series. There's a pretty interesting mystery behind what is going on with the monsters. I'm not sure if I will keep up with the series, but I'll definitely consider if/when the next volume is on the library's website.

* My first ever compact disc** purchase was a compilation of Scooby-Doo themes called Scooby-Doo's Snack Tracks. It included a remix of the Scooby-Doo, Where Are You? theme, which I thought was awesome at the time. It probably wasn't.  (Never mind, it's amazing: https://youtu.be/i0utce5qsH4?list=PL5CD1CA1A9125BFA5 #sarcasm...kinda)
** I am an old :(

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